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The next installment in my Adventures in Spam series features a fairly common type of scam email that has been getting more popular lately as increasing numbers of people are figuring out that they can actually make money online. It involves what is essentially a fake work-at-home employment offer- the scammer pretends to be a representative of a legitimate (usually offline) company, then offers to hire you as some type of payment processor or clerical worker.

In most cases, the true purpose of the email is simply to solicit a reply from you. If you actually reply with any indications of interest, the spammer-scammers will send another letter requesting some type of “processing fee” so that they can cover the cost of sending the relevant paperwork and materials to you. Usually this fee is a fairly small amount, like $10 or $20. The scammers are hoping that if they can advertise to enough “suckers” by spamming, they will achieve a high enough sales volume for the small amounts to add up to a significant amount of money for them. And of course, if the old cliché about a sucker being born every minute holds true, the same spam mail can be sent out again at regular intervals and provide the scammers with a steady income from “processing fees”. Here is a typical example of such an email that I received a few days ago:
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While many of us might prefer firearms as the ultimate self-defense solution, many states and governments around the world are enacting increasingly restrictive “gun control” laws that severely limit our right to keep and bear arms. Some cities like Chicago are even setting up gun buyback programs in an attempt to fool us into thinking that we really don’t need any kind of weapons for defense and that we should just trust the police or the military to protect us from criminal attacks.

Of course, we Libertarians realize that this is a bunch of statist claptrap and that self-defense is our most basic (and perhaps the most important) natural right. Still, the myriad laws imposed by various levels of government can make it difficult to figure out exactly how we can properly defend ourselves without becoming victims of both criminals and the State. In such cases, the use of various defensive sprays can provide a reasonable non-lethal alternative to firearms for basic personal protection.

This article by Aaron Turpen of aaronzwebworkz.com provides a good overview of defensive sprays, covering the varieties available, spray patterns, carrying suggestions, and other bits of useful information.

In today’s world of crime and violence, being unprepared to stave off an assault is tantamount to putting a “kick me” sign on your back and hoping no one laughs at you.

One of the most common choices made for everyday personal protection is a defensive spray. There are several varieties of these sprays available, from tear gas to pepper sprays to mixtures of the two. They come in a variety of sizes, potencies, and spray patterns. Choosing a spray is your first step in becoming prepared.

Choosing A Defensive Spray

While you’d think that buying a “pepper spray” would be easy and a no-brainer, it’s actually a little bit complicated. There are several types of defensive sprays out there. The most common is OC (Oleoresin Capsicum), which has in most cases proven to be very effective. CS (Orthoclorobenzalmalonitrile - try saying that one two or three times in a row!) is what is commonly called “mace” (not to be confused with the company Mace, which manufactures all types of defensive sprays) or “tear gas”.
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Today I received an email from TD Ameritrade, an investment brokerage company that allows its clients to buy and sell stocks and other securities online. Apparently a recent investigation uncovered some “unauthorized code” in their computer systems that was used for harvesting email addresses. This might explain some of the investment-related spam that I have been getting over the past few years, including those infamous stock pumping scam letters. Although I haven’t used it for years, I had opened an account with Ameritrade back in 2000, so my email address probably found its way onto the spam lists.

Meanwhile, the executives at Ameritrade (much to their chagrin, I can imagine) are in full damage control mode, attempting to reassure us that our identities will not be stolen…or, well, at least there is no evidence that they have been stolen, although our social security numbers were probably in there somewhere. And of course, our assets are secure even though their computer systems are, umm… somewhat less secure since they just got hacked by spammers!

Dear Karl Erfurt,

Let me tell you why I am sending you this email. While investigating client reports about the industry-wide issue of investment-related SPAM, we recently discovered and eliminated unauthorized code from our systems. This code allowed certain client information stored in one of our databases, including email addresses, to be retrieved by an external source.

Please be assured that UserIDs and passwords are not included in this database, and we can confirm that your assets remain secure at TD AMERITRADE.

What we want you to know:
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This article details the story of Natalia Pollack, a woman who worked in the telecommunications industry several years ago and managed to achieve a significant victory in becoming the manager of a new help desk project in an environment where almost everyone else simply wanted to “pass the buck”.

Part One – A Challenge

Several years and a career lifetime ago, I was a telecom analyst in an MIS department. The company I worked for was large, you’d recognize the name immediately if I told you, and the MIS department was mostly male territory. My boss assigned me to a project to look at how the calls got routed into MIS because of the number of complaints that seemed to be focused on getting sent to the wrong resource in MIS.

After reviewing the various technical configurations, the phone book, and then asking the complainers about the problem I discovered something entirely different from what the purview of my project covered. I discovered that no one wanted to take responsibility for the phone calls, and that’s why the “Users” were being sent round and round. The technical telecommunication system was fine, nothing wrong with it, not many options for “improving it” without further automation – which I knew from talking to the “Users” would infuriate them and frustrate them to an even higher level.

I had a choice to make. I could report back that the system was just fine. Or I could report back that the system was not the problem…the staff in MIS was the problem. If I chose the first, I’d be “part of the problem” but I wouldn’t be making waves for my co-workers – who already eyed me warily because I represented “change” to them. If I chose the second, my big challenge would be getting things done because I knew I would meet with a host of negatives and passive negatives from my coworkers.

You know I had to choose the second option. I had a real quandary on my hands with how to present my findings in a way that encouraged my boss to support me. I had to show him what was in it for him – which meant I had to figure out “what is important to him”. I decided not to simply report my findings, but to offer two or three solutions. Solutions that would address areas I knew were important to him. That translated into 1. Budget Savings; 2. Building his Reputation; and 3. Saving him from dealing with Problems.

Of the options I proposed, my boss chose the “One Stop Shopping” centralized “Help Desk”. That meant pulling together a staff from the existing MIS folks, who knew how to fix or troubleshoot problems or knew exactly who could It meant training them to speak to non-technical people and to deal with frustrations in a positive way. And it meant getting things done in a timely, courteous, efficient manner. He chose this option in August with an “Oh, by the way can you head this up and put it in place by Labor Day?” which was not so much a question as an edict. He added that the CIO had hand picked 4 people from the various departments to come into the new “Help Desk” and I needed to get the processes, procedures, training, telecom, and staff in place and ready for that September launch.

I panicked, screamed, shouted, laughed, and cried in the car on my commute home that night. How the heck was I supposed to make this happen in less than three weeks? How was I supposed to work with 4 guys who I knew would be surprised to be yanked from their positions and thrown in to work on a “Help Desk” for a Woman? Two of these guys were cited by “Users” as being hard to reach and never returning calls – just great! The other two were “marginal performers” and I think the hidden agenda was to outrage them into quitting because their current bosses couldn’t or wouldn’t fire them outright.

When I got home that night, I immediately listed out all the tasks that I needed to get done. It was going to be a bumpy ride for the next three weeks and looking at everything that needed to be done I was overwhelmed. I started another list of concerns and issues. I decided that I had better meet with each of the guys being transferred to work with me and try to start out on the right foot. It was hard to get to sleep that night.
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One of my favorite paid survey companies, Synovate Global Opinion Panels, released the September issue of its monthly newsletter today. Overall, the news is looking pretty good; not only has Synovate increased the amount of cashable points received for each survey, but they are also planning on implementing PayPal and Amazon gift certificates as payment options in the near future. This should reduce the amount of waiting time required to receive payments, which are currently made primarily by check.

Synovate has turned out to be one of the better survey companies out there, and is also one where I seem to have had some positive influence. When I first joined their panel back in 2004, there was no points system in place and actual cash payments were relatively rare. Except for a few major market research projects, most rewards for completed surveys were only sweepstakes entries, which in practical terms were usually worthless. However, after enduring these pitifully low compensation levels through most of 2005, I started taking some extra time to fill out the comment boxes that were provided near the end of most surveys where we had a chance to give them our opinions regarding the surveys themselves (as opposed to the products or services that the surveys were about). In the comments, I explained to them that they would probably get a better quality of responses to the survey questions and a higher level of participation if they would offer some form of cash compensation for our time, even if it was only a small amount.

To my surprise, they actually seemed to listen to this and a few months later, they eventually set us up with internal accounts and a points system where we could redeem the points for real checks and effectively receive small cash payments for each survey. Unlike many other companies, they even credit us with partial payments in cases where we “screen out” of the survey and do not qualify to complete the whole thing. They have also been nice about sending us other small “freebie” items occasionally, such as calendars, refrigerator magnets, water bottles, and stationery.

Below is the content of the newsletter, which explains the developments that are planned for the near future and includes results from some recent polling data on the opinions of Synovate panel members.
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Most of us who have done any serious amount of cooking understand the culinary benefits of thyme. It adds a wonderful flavor to a wide variety of sauces and seasoning mixtures, and can also function well when added to marinades or used as a rub. But what many people may not know is that it also has some medicinal uses, many of which were discovered in ancient times and have been passed down to us from other cultures. This article by Joanne Rawson briefly describes some of thyme’s lesser known uses and explains how to make an infusion of the herb that can be used for medicinal purposes.

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When attempting to diagnose problems with SEO on a website, one potentially useful tool that is often overlooked is the Internet archive, also known as the Wayback Machine. The Internet archive is a database of historical records that stores the images and source code for websites, allowing you to see what they looked like at any point in their history. After reading an interesting article written by an employee at a reputable SEO firm, I realized that this archive has uses that go beyond simple curiosity about what websites looked like in the past.

In the case of the SEO firm that was described in the article, it turns out that they had a client who was operating a business site in a fairly competitive industry and was suddenly having problems with decreasing search rankings. Prior to the recent drops, the site had been doing well in the rankings for most relevant keywords and had been steadily building up traffic over the past three months. The people at the SEO company that was hired to figure out what the problem was could not seem to determine the source of the decline in rankings through conventional methods. The site had clean code and appeared to be well optimized, and there were not any substantial changes to the site’s content during the period when the sudden decrease in traffic occurred.

Just as they were about to give up, someone at the company got the idea to check the Internet archive and discovered that there was a small but important difference in the HTML of the site’s home page before and after the major traffic decline. Before the fall, the navigation links had titles that were well optimized for the main keywords, but the archive for pages after the traffic drop (including the then-current version of the page) showed that although the links still existed and were functional, the title attributes had been removed, which effectively reduced the keyword density of the home page. This explained the subsequent decline in the rankings, so the link titles were quickly replaced and the site gradually moved back up to where it had been before. It was discovered later that the site’s web designer had accidentally removed the link title code during a recent update and never realized what had happened.

The incident inspired some thought about the possible uses of the Internet archive for the purposes of SEO and general website management. Here are ten ways in which the Wayback Machine can be utilized:
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One of the ways in which we Libertarians can have an impact on the political process is by writing letters to the editor and getting them published in various newspapers or other media outlets that allow it. This is one method in which we can get our message out to the public, particularly the non-tech savvy part of the public that still relies on newspapers and other traditional print media as their main source of political news and information.

However, many people may not realize that writing letters to the editor requires a certain amount of skill, and not just anyone with an opinion is able to write them well enough to pass editorial muster and actually have them published. Although it is by no means a substitute for competence in basic writing skills, this article by James C. Hess provides us with a pretty good primer on how we can recover this “lost art”.
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After running a few special promotions in recent weeks, Royal Surf has updated again, but this time they have announced some significant improvements to the program and the overall surfing experience. Free members are getting a boost (from three to five) to the total number of sites that can be promoted at one time, which is good because it will help me gain a little more exposure for my sites and programs. There will also be unlimited text link and banner promotions allowed, feedback on referral information has been improved, and the interface for the text message chat board on the surfbar has been streamlined and made easier to use.

Admin Catherine Heiter has also discovered a new site called “thumbalizr”, which is essentially an application that allows users to take a quick screenshot of any website and download it to your computer. As far as I can tell, there are no affiliate programs or money-making opportunities associated with this, but it still seems like a useful tool nonetheless. Finally, Admin has announced another upcoming referral competition and is promising new prizes and upgrades to the site in the future. As usual, the exact details are posted below.
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The second product sample that I mentioned in last week’s consumerism article arrived today. We received a bottle of body wash that appears to be about eight ounces in volume and does not reveal any brand name on the label. The actual product is pale blue in color and has about the same consistency as Head & Shoulders shampoo. The fragrance is similar to Irish Spring bar soap, with perhaps a hint of Zest or Dial scents mixed in with it. Later today, I will probably have a chance to use the product and test its cleansing effectiveness. According to our instructions, we should be getting another bottle of body wash within three or four days:
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Over the past two weeks, I have been reading some interesting emails and articles about a technique called “bum marketing”. Travis Sago has been building up his subscriber list by offering some good advice along with some mini e-courses in this particular genre, which is something that I am considering doing eventually as soon as I get some opt-in forms and autoresponders set up. For those of you who do not want to read through a long post, I will summarize the steps needed to get started and make money with this strategy below and then reprint some of Travis’s recent emails that will more throughly explain the details.

What Is Bum Marketing?

Bum marketing is a niche within the Internet marketing field that uses techniques designed to allow a novice who has no money to start (hence the word “bum”) achieve a modicum of success and eventually build up a significant stream of passive income. It is similar to article marketing, except instead of trying to sell the articles yourself, you can leverage the favorable SEO positioning of article directory sites to bring traffic to your links, and then make money through affiliate sales. Here are the basic steps involved in executing this type of plan:

1. Select a keyword phrase that does not have too much competition but still relates to a fairly popular product that can be sold through your affiliate link. Suitable keywords can be found by using Overture or Wordtracker and then doing an exact match search (that is, place quotation marks around the whole phrase) at Google while paying attention to the total number of results. If this number is below 5,000 or so, then you probably have a good keyword. As for the products themselves, the easiest place to start with is Clickbank, although you can also include products from other networks such as Commission Junction or PayDotCom.

2. After you have a keyword phrase and a product to link it with, write an article around the chosen keyword, making sure to include the phrase once in the title of the article and a few times throughout the text of the body.

3. When the article is finished, submit it to one of the main article directories such as GoArticles.com, USFreeAds, or Ezinearticles.com. When you get to the author’s resource box or “bio box” part of the submission, you can include your affiliate link here. Most sites will allow you to link directly to the merchant’s site, but a few of them such as Ezinearticles.com will require you to link to some type of landing page from which you can then redirect visitors to your affiliate link. If you have no money to start, you can set up a free Blogger or Wordpress site for this. Otherwise, if you have at least a small amount of money, you can set up your own domain name and hosting. Then you can just upload the landing pages to your server.

4. After a few days to two weeks, your article should appear in the search engine results, hopefully ranking somewhere in the top 10 for your chosen keyword phrase. If you manage to get a good ranking, some visitors will click through to your article and affiliate links at the bottom. Eventually, a few of these people will convert into sales, thus giving you a small amount of passive income.

5. In order to increase your income, simply repeat the process with other products and low competition keyword phrases. For the fastest results, many marketers recommend writing at least one article per day, but there is really no set rule for this. Like all types of Internet marketing, this technique allows you to work at your own pace without the stress of deadlines, bosses, or other annoyances that are commonly encountered in the traditional corporate world.

For some additional tips on how to succeed with bum marketing, here is some more information from one of Travis Sago’s recent emails:

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The mailing label product sample that I mentioned last week in the article on rampant consumerism arrived today. There are two separate sets of labels, each of which has 10 sheets with six labels per sheet. They are designed to be printed with a standard inkjet printer, and afterward each label can be peeled off the sheets and applied to packages, boxes, or anything else that might require labeling. This is another one of those surveys where the products are divided into “use first” and “use second” categories, and after we use each product set we will take the follow-up survey online. Meanwhile, Farrand Research, the sponsoring company for this particular test, also sent us a regular paper questionnaire along with the product, the first page of which details our official instructions:
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This commentary by Joel D. on the recent seizure of margarine from a Wal-Mart in Quebec highlights the connection between stupid laws, black markets, and government inefficiency. After procuring the rights to publish this article, I did a little research on this story and discovered that there is a silly law in Quebec that prohibits manufacturers of margarine from making the color of their products appear too much like the color of natural butter. Apparently it was this “butter colored” margarine that prompted this seizure of some 72 tubs of Becel margarine back in 2005. Joel’s observations on the issue seem pretty funny in this instance, but they also remind us of the insane consequences of attempting to ban the peaceful use of substances that people actually want to buy.
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Like anyone who is in the business of creating content for a living, we bloggers sometimes have to deal with the phenomenon of writer’s block. This article by Jeff Johnston explores some of the common causes of this condition and describes a technique called freewriting that can be used to overcome it.

Writer’s block is the bane of any writer. Most of us, if not all of us have experienced it at one point or another in our writing career. For those of you who don’t know what it is, writer’s block is a condition that occurs when a writer sits down to write something and cannot get anything to appear on the page. It is a mental block that seems to cease all creative thought. There are many causes of writer’s block:
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Yesterday as I was clicking through the mails from the Owl Post PTR, I noticed that one of the ads had a brief notation at the top of the page from the program owner. This message was informing us that we should not speed through the mail and take a serious look at the site being advertised because the program owner had bookmarked it. As I slowed down to look at the site, I discovered that it was a relatively new Malaysian recipe site called FoodNet.

Although the site only has about a dozen recipes listed at present, the webmaster here is hoping to gather many more from other people all over the world. The overall plan is to build a comprehensive resource for authentic local cuisine to serve a guide for international travelers. Meanwhile, the recipes that have been posted so far look pretty good and are representative of popular dishes from Malaysia and Singapore.

There is also a place under the heading “Food Spy Wanted” for us to submit our own foods for inclusion on the site. After I have a chance to try some of these exotic Malaysian foods, I may return to the site later and send in a few of my favorite recipes to help them build up their collection.